


Last Night at the Met

by Fabular_Mr_Fox



Category: Brideshead Revisited - All Media Types, Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Genre: AU, Alcohol, Bad Decisions, Blow Jobs, Drunk Sex, Incest, Instagram Fame, Modern AU, Multi, New York City, Polyamory, The Metropolitan Opera, Threesome, Vintage Clothes, Weed, bathroom blowjobs, i mean not TECHNICALLY incest, m/m/f, romans a clef
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:32:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabular_Mr_Fox/pseuds/Fabular_Mr_Fox
Summary: "We had an informal system: Manhattan knew me as Julia's thing. Since Sebastian rarely suffered himself to be seen in that borough, all of Brooklyn belonged to him and me. Queens was...not usually a consideration."...I wanted to write a modern NYC AU in the style of Donna Tartt or Claire Messud. I think it kind of worked....In other news, since no one on this website seems to have WRITTEN Sebastian/Charles/Julia, let alone NAMED the ship, I feel it's well within my rights to call dibs on that right now. Come join me in the incestuous filth of Connecting Flytes.





	Last Night at the Met

Julia called on Friday afternoon, rather too late, and asked me to opening night at the Met.

"Mummy's so sad to miss it," she said. " _Norma_ ’s one of her favorites. But she's come down with an awful flu. Anyway, there's a seat free and I thought of you."

"Jules," I said. "I have an evening class."

"Cancel,” she said. “Your students will love you for it. _I’ll_ love you for it." 

Sighing, I opened a new email draft and began to type up the notice. "All right. What time do you need me?"

"Can you get there a bit early?” she asked victory turning her voice to velvet. "There's some people I'd like you to meet."

"Will do. Black tie?"

"If you don't mind."

Luckily I hadn't worn it since Blanche's wedding (his third, god help us all), and it still hung in the bag, fresh from the dry cleaner. A hero, that man. The dry cleaner, I should clarify, though Blanche could be heroic in his own mein.

"Oh, Charles," she added, and I detected a delicate note in her voice which told me she had been waiting to mention this, but had withheld it and was now trying to be careless.

Annoyance made my response sound long-suffering. "What is it, Jules?" I had finished writing the email to my students but had yet to send it. Pending her revelation, I hesitated a moment more.

"Just so you know, Sebastian may show up." She sounded as though she were tiptoeing between broken glass, or tripwires. "There's a seat for him, but you know how he is about these things."

My forefinger trembled over my touchpad; and then, resolve solidifying, I hit send. 

"Well then." I closed my laptop with a snap. "I'll be glad to see him if he comes."

#

The trains were a disaster on the way into Brooklyn, leaving me barely enough time to jump into my suit. I had to get a cab to Lincoln Center and struggle with my bow tie in the back seat. I'd had no dinner, which I knew was a mistake; there would be champagne before the opera, and bad cocktails at intermission. All that on an empty stomach? And I did tend to drink more when I was nervous. Sebastian might not show, but I had a presentiment. Something superstitious in me said he would.

It wasn't as though the two of them were unaware of the situation. We simply didn't speak of it. Or rather, Julia and I didn't speak of it, except obliquely. Sebastian had no such compunctions, and teased me mercilessly about the tawdry fact of my incestuous affair. Still, I think his laughter was a thin veneer for deep discomfort. Perhaps jealousy? 

We had an informal system: Manhattan knew me as Julia's thing. Since Sebastian rarely suffered himself to be seen in that borough, all of Brooklyn belonged to him and me. Queens was...not usually a consideration. 

As I taught at Cooper Union and kept house in a Carroll Gardens studio, this arrangement was generally well suited to my train lines and teaching schedule. The nights that I had class, I spent at 81st and Park. But Sebastian had me most weekends, and it was even odds whether we ended up at mine or his: a messy railroad off the G and L at Metropolitan. 

At any rate, it was a rare thing to see the siblings together, and always somewhat stilted; they were different people with each other than with me. Or rather, more exaggerated versions of themselves. The things I loved about each of them--Sebastian's impulsive gaiety and crude humor, Julia's charm and aptitude for any social situation--drove each of them up the wall about the other. 

"Why can't you ever keep a date?" she'd ask him. "Why can't you ever be on time?" And "must you say such awful things?"

"God, Jules," he'd say. "You're such a people-pleaser. And a bore.”

The awkward family dinners I’d occasionally attended hovered on the edge of farce. Since my father and I fell out--or rather, wandered so far apart that we stopped speaking altogether--Mrs. Flyte had begun to invite me for holiday meals, either at her townhouse on the upper east side, or to her home in the Catskills (Julia had a car, but always asked me to drive; she’d grown up in the city, while I had come down from Connecticut and been licensed since I turned sixteen). I wasn’t sure how much Mrs. Flyte knew about my liaisons with her children, and I wasn’t keen on finding out. If I was just a friend from school, as far as she knew, that was fine by me.

I paid my fare while we were still mired in traffic and wove my way through yellow cabs and black cars to the plaza, where people in varying levels of outrageous dress were taking posed photos by the illuminated fountain. It was a well-polished refrain with Mrs. Flyte, the falling standard of dress at the theatre, and at the opera in particular. Worse, that when people tried they often got it wrong. The gala was no exception, though one saw fewer jeans and leather jackets and more outrageous items that looked like they belonged on the runway at a Commes des Garçon show, or in a documentary about zany older women breaking fashion boundaries.

Some people turned out well, of course, and Julia was always one of them. I saw her before she saw me: on the stairs, chatting with a young gay couple and an Upper East Side grande dame with a bad blue rinse. One of the men wore a boring suit cut slightly too tight; I guessed finance, and Indochino. His date had on purple snakeskin shoes. It was too warm for mink, but nobody had told the old woman, or if they had, she had not deigned to hear.

Julia, of course, looked stunning. She did not permit herself many foibles, but we had been on intimate terms long enough that I knew her browser history. “Molyneux evening gown,” “Madame Grès,” “True Vintage Vionnet,” “True Vintage Balenciaga 1930s,” “Fortuny Delphos gown in good condition.” Her apartment was technically a two bedroom, but one of those had become a walk-in closet warded with bushels of lavender. She despised the smell of mothballs.

Tonight, she wore something in pale pink satin, with a dropped back and a train that wrapped about her legs whenever she moved. I couldn’t have told you who designed it, only that it looked old and fragile, and that she certainly had not worn a bra. Her hair was drawn up in a snood, sparkling with crystals. Lipstick stained her plastic champagne flute.

“Charles!” she said, when I put a hand to her bare arm. “I was just talking about you.” 

It turned out the old lady had given a heap of money to the Catholic charity where Julia was assistant director of development. She was also an art collector known to take an interest in rising talent, which was why Julia had wanted us to meet. The young man in the snakeskin shoes was her nephew, the ill-cut suit his boyfriend. The grande dame introduced them without irony or hesitation. Pleasantries dispatched, I begged leave to find the bar and Julia excused us from the conversation with an elegant wave of her hand.

“Are you going to tease me horribly about cosmopolitan New York Catholics now?” she asked, as a woman in a badly fitting uniform mixed my drink. As I had predicted, it was awful.

“No,” I said, and put the thing back in one swallow like I was taking medicine. “I’m just going to take you home and tempt you into sin to prove my point. Adulteress.” 

She had stopped wearing her ring some time ago, when the abominable Rex--who had thoroughly put paid to the stereotype of polite Canadians--went back to Ontario and made himself scarce. But the word “divorce” had never crossed her lips. Perhaps she was less liberal than the mink-draped grande dame, and was waiting for Rex to die before remarrying. I hoped he’d cling to his mortal coil for a while. I loved the Flytes, but was not sure I wanted to marry into the family, or their church. And anyway, how would Sebastian feel?

As if thinking had summoned him, I felt a hand on my hip and warmth at my side and suddenly Sebastian was there, cat-like in his amusement and disdain, his need to be as close to my body as possible. 

“Charles,” he said, and his voice hit me in a place Julia’s never did. Filth was a milieu Sebastian inhabited more naturally than his sister. Where the only hint of her arousal was a half-smile over coffee, he was half-naked with his mouth on your cock before you realized you were hard.

Which, of course, I was. Instantly.

“Here,” he said, handing me a silver flask. “I brought a bit of the good stuff; everything they serve here is shit.”

Julia was distracted chatting to a woman in a white satin gown and a matching cape, her silent film star waves dyed deep maroon. Two men in full white tie flanked her, one tall, dark, and stoic, the other a ginger-haired character with an uncanny resemblance to Evelyn Waugh, if the author had worn hipster horn rims. Whereas the tall man carried his boredom obviously, and with great solemnity, this character had mastered the art of looking interested. When I caught him take his own flask out and drink right under Julia’s nose and that of his own companions, I felt safe doing the same.

“Who’s that?” I asked, chin angled toward the ensemble. “The woman.”

“Writes religion for Vox,” said Sebastian. “Interviewed mummy a while back. Author too, I think. And erstwhile theatre critic at the Village Voice. Falls asleep halfway through the first act every time, like clockwork. Splendid reviews, though. Jules!”

Julia startled from her conversation, saw her brother, and reassembled her persona. “Oh, Sebastian, you made it! And before the curtain. Barely.” There was a little bit of bite in that. Her eyes flicked down and took in Sebastian’s arm around my waist.

“I was confessing,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a joke. It started out insouciant and ended sounding hurt. He slipped away from me, sullen.

“Well,” said Julia, now looking faintly chastened. “Come here and let me introduce you, anyway.”

We went around the circle. _My brother, Sebastian, yes, and this is Charles Ryder, he teaches at Cooper Union. The painter, yes! You’ve seen his work?_ And then the theatre critic, already quite drunk. Hipster Waugh was actually British, and worked in some capacity for NBC. He was about as wasted as his companions, though handling it better. I couldn’t have told you the second man’s name or occupation if I tried. At this point the bad cocktails and better scotch had soaked through my empty stomach into my bloodstream and, subsequently, to my brain.

“Oh, Rose!” said Julia, to someone over my left shoulder. “It’s so good to see you. How was your trip to...Japan, right? For the book? By the way, I _love_ that dress. You always look so darling. Oh, no, of course we don’t mind. Here, Sebastian, squeeze in...”

And then we had to have our photo taken. Julia put her arm through mine and leaned close enough I could smell her perfume. Salome, by Papillon. Infamous for its dirty-panties smell, and doubly filthy on her tonight, in her pale pink dress and public persona. If she had worn it, she’d been thinking about what we might get up to after the opera. And now I was thinking about it as well: the slow circling as we talked around what we really wanted. The cocktails she would mix we would not finish. The care with which I would remove her antique gown; her skin beneath it. The marks I would leave on the canvas of her body--I was a painter, after all--which she would hide under a high-necked cashmere sweater or a carefully knotted Hermès scarf.

But I would know. And when we went for breakfast in the morning I would trace the constellation of bruises beneath her clothes and know what hid under her flawless façade. Then I would take her home and fuck her again, leave for class with the smell of her still on my fingers, the taste of her still on my tongue.

Sebastian hung a casual elbow on my shoulder, opposite his sister. I startled at his touch, then grinned into the camera as though this wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

When the photographer had moved on, Julia melted out of her pose. “There Charles, aren’t you glad you bothered to dress up? We’ll be on Last Night at the Met! Oh, Sebastian, your tie is crooked. Damn it.”

But it suited him--made him rakish. His hair, too, looked as though someone had recently had their hands in it. My own hands curled, nails to palms, remembering.

“Jules,” said Sebastian. “Nobody’s going to dock you points over your brother’s crooked tie. They won’t even be looking at me. Here, have that.” He handed her his flask, underhanded, so she didn’t at first see what it was she put her palm out to take by reflex. 

When she did, she turned indignant. “Sebastian--”

“Go on,” I told her. “You could use it.” Her sparkle had an edge, this evening. But who could blame her? This evening was swiftly becoming interminable.

She looked at me suspiciously, and I think saw that I was well on my way to drunk. “On top of champagne, Charles?” 

I shrugged. “I’m a doctor.” Of the arts. “You can trust me.”

Letting out a great, exasperated sigh, she said, “You two are going to get me into trouble,” and tipped the contents of the flask down her throat.

#

At the end of the first half, under cover of the applause, Sebastian leaned close and said into my ear, “Meet me in the men’s room?”

I gave him a quelling look. “This isn’t some dive bar in Bushwick.”

“Julia will be waiting for ages at the ladies’,” said Sebastian. “She won’t even notice, not until you go home and can’t get it up.” His smile made a blush rise beneath my collar.

“I can do better than that,” I said, against any shred of good judgment I had left. “And you know it.”

“What are you two whispering about?” asked Julia. Then, “My god, I have to pee.”

“Better run,” said Sebastian, and butter would not have melted in his mouth. “You know how the line gets.”

When she was gone, Sebastian stood. When I failed to follow, he slumped back into his seat and stared at me. “Come _on_ , I _know_ she’s going to take you back to hers tonight. Can’t we have just a little bit of fun?”

“Not here,” I said, because while I’d let him suck me off in any number of semi-public places, and done the same for him, the Met gala seemed like tempting fate. “Let’s go out for drinks or something after. We’ll pick some people up.” I extemporizing desperately. “She might not notice in a crowd.”

“She’ll notice. She just won’t say anything.”

“That’s got to be good enough,” I said, offering my hand to shake. “Deal?”

His palm was hot, and he pulled me close. I thought he was going to whisper something filthy in my ear; instead his tongue curled against the thin skin behind my jaw. I think I made a sound; I must have, or at least my face showed something. Sebastian laughed and hauled me from my seat as he stood again.

“Let’s see if we can’t get something halfway decent at the bar,” he said. “Or failing decent, something strong.”

#

When Julia met us at the end of intermission, she wore a bemused smile. At first, irrational with whiskey, I assumed she knew what we had planned. Then she sat and told us she had seen the Voice critic-turned-Vox writer in the bathroom, “pulling a split of prosecco out of her purse.”

“Did she share?” asked Sebastian. 

Julia made a moue. “She asked if we’d like to do drinks after the show. I told her yes. I hope you don’t mind?” This last was to me, but it was Sebastian who answered.

“Perfect,” he said. “Charles, weren’t we just saying? _We_ ought to invite _them_.”

I saw annoyance flash in Julia’s eyes, and when it cooled she had grown steely; she had not meant the invitation for her brother. Probably she had assumed he wouldn’t want to come. “Oh good,” she said, and settled stiffly into her seat. The lights went down.

In the darkness, as sopranos wailed, I put my hand on Julia’s thigh beneath the armrest of my chair. She flinched at first, surprised, then sent a sidelong glance my way. Reflected stage lights sparkled on her jewels and showed me the fine down of hair at the edge of her jaw. She smiled, and let cool fingertips rest on my wrist, just below my cuff.

Sebastian's grip on me was rather ruder when it came, and Julia noticed my surprise. When she cast an inquiring glance toward me I found the religion she'd always hoped I might and prayed fervently she wouldn't look down. 

By curtain call, my cock was aching. Furious and aroused and by now very drunk, I convinced myself no one would notice if I used my program as a screen, and reached into my trousers to tuck the offending organ behind my waistband. The cold metal of the zipper pressed painfully against my sensitive skin.

“Christ,” I said, as the cast bowed again, “can't they wrap it up?”

Still smiling, though the expression had turned brittle, Julia closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Sorry dear,” I said, and leaned in to kiss the clean line of her neck. I smelled her perfume again: the indole-stink of jasmine and animal musk. “Mm. Salome?” Although I knew, I wanted her to admit it.

“Yes,” she said, too crisply.

“You were in a dirty mood today,” I purred, and realized how very much I sounded like Sebastian. 

She blushed, then blanched when I caught her hand and pressed it to the front of my trousers.

“Charles!” she hissed.

Sebastian saw me do it, and a queer look came over his face: a pained expression that said _of course_ even as it said _how dare you_. I regretted my impulse, but the brief pressure of Julia’s palm on my cock made it ache the more and I tried to tell him with my eyes that I could not wait to feel his mouth on me, get mine on him.

“Come on, you two,” said Julia, and towed me like a toddler out of our row. I reached back for Sebastian, but he batted my hand away. 

“Don’t be surly,” I tossed over my shoulder.

“ _Charles_.” Julia gave a little tug on my arm.

A few rows ahead of us, our new friends--whose names had utterly abandoned me--were stirring from their seats and, in the case of the critic, from her sleep. Julia waved to them and together we hove into the press of people heading for the exit signs. 

We all stopped in the lobby, surrounded by a swirl of light and velvet and the roar of a thousand frivolous conversations. Somebody called us a cab and I found myself en route to the Carlyle in the back of a black town car, wedged between the Flyte siblings.

“Did you get him drunk?” asked Julia, addressing the darkness of the park outside the window.

“He got _himself_ drunk,” said Sebastian, to his phone.

I flung my hands up. “I’m right here.”

“Sober enough for your purposes, probably,” said Sebastian, ignoring me. “You have to get him well and truly _shitfaced_ before he can’t perform.”

“Sebastian!” I turned to glare at him, because I didn’t dare look at Julia. I could feel her beside me, rigid with indignation or embarrassment or both. 

He made a placating motion with his hands, palms out, and pulled a face. “Sorry.”

Silence reigned through the next red light. Sebastian sulked. I fretted. Julia...well, I could hardly tell. She was always so guarded, but this felt different. As though something were simmering underneath that thin veneer of put-together charm. I knew what it looked and felt like when she lost her temper--dry ice, liquid nitrogen. She had inherited her mother’s reserve but not exactly her control. This was altogether different than anger, and more alarming because of it.

She put a hand on my leg, not exactly as I had, earlier in the evening; This was not a flirtation but an anchor as she readied herself to speak. I finally turned to face her and saw her lips part--freshly slick with the recent pass of her lipstick and wet at the inner edges; God help me, but my thoughts were lewd.

“Charles,” she said. And then her eyes slid from me to Sebastian. Whatever she wanted to say, it teetered for a moment, held back by her indrawn breath. Then something in her crumpled and she fell back against her seat without speaking.

I put my hand over hers and gently squeezed her fingers. Behind the bulwark of his phone Sebastian pretended not to notice, but I knew him better than that.

The next time Julia broke the silence, it was only to chirp, “Oh, we’re here,” and thank the Uber driver. She had reassembled herself utterly. Another car pulled up behind us and disgorged our companions for the evening, whom I now thoroughly resented. What had Julia been about to say? I would never find out now. Later she would pretend nothing of consequence had happened in the cab. I gave it up for lost and followed everyone else up the steps.

The maitre d’ at Bemelmans, sensing I’m certain that we were apt to be disruptive, stuck us in a dark back corner far from the piano, which suited me nicely. Bottles and ice buckets appeared on the table. Julia, by now glittering with the effects of perhaps more liquor than was wise, had become an ebullient hostess and taken the gathering in hand, leaving me with Sebastian at the far end of the table, just as he had planned.

From his perch at the corner of the leather bench, he leaned into my shoulder. Too drunk to hold his weight, I leaned on the critic in turn. Her bare arm was soft and white, spotted with freckles. I recovered several seconds late and shifted so Sebastian and I were pressed against each other.

“You're gagging for it,” he said, and the “f” rushed into my ear, hot breath furry as microphone fry.

I nodded casually, as though my pulse hadn't jumped.

“Meet you in three,” he said, and his weight was gone so swiftly from my side I nearly fell from the booth.

“Ooh!” exclaimed the critic, and lunged to catch me. “Careful!” Then she put a restraining arm across my chest as though she were a seatbelt, and giggled until she began to snort. 

“You two,” she said. “You and him. Are you…” Cue an obscene eyebrow, cocked at an angle worthy of Lauren Bacall. “Because I thought you were with _her_.” Here, rolled her eyes toward Julia. 

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept mum. The pantomime, however, had drawn Julia’s attention. “Where's Sebastian?”

“Bathroom,” I said, waving vaguely. God, I hoped I could find the place fast when I needed to. 

She tipped her head to the side, sharpening the angle of her jaw: not a question but a warning. One I planned to disobey as soon as our compatriots lured her back into conversation. She would be furious. I touched my collar, which seemed suddenly too tight, and dithered over my warring desires.

But then Sebastian sent a filthy text, poorly spelt. I stood up and took a step from the booth. Julia stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “where are you off to?” She was usually careful to curb her drinking before she passed from charming to petulant, but it seemed tonight she'd missed the mark.

“I'll be back in a minute,” I said, which wasn't an answer, and turned before she could press me, if she even dared to do so in front of company.

He was waiting for me, sitting on the sink with his back against the wall, one leg extended and the other knee drawn up. The mirror showed him in profile: sleepy-eyed and flushed with booze. He had undone his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt, and when he saw me come in he popped the tab of his trousers too.

“Wait a second,” I said, though I belied myself by stepping toward him.

“What for? We've only got so many.”

I struggled with my good intentions, and succumbed at the sight of him pulling his cock from his fly, the delicate fan of his finger bones moving beneath his skin as he squeezed.

“Get in a fucking stall, at least,” I said.

“No.” Bratty as a spoilt child, he swung his feet from the marble counter and pointed to the tiles. “You can kneel right here and suck me off.” He raised an eyebrow at my hesitation, looking too much like his sister. “I'm sure the floor’s quite clean. After all, what did you say earlier? It's not some dive bar in Bushwick.”

And for all I said, “God damn it,” I found myself between his legs.

The counter was too tall for me to kneel, quite, so instead I put my hands one either side of his hips and bent over him, not touching the floor at all. The shape of him felt familiar on my tongue, pressing further and further back as I bore down. I didn't have to think: only swallow against him and taste salty-bitter precum at the back of my throat. He clutched at a fistful of my hair, and his grip was so tight it stung.

“Fuck,” he said, “Yes, you've wanted this all night, I can _feel_ it. You'd fucking swallow it all if you could.”

My jaw ached. The marble under my palms was freezing.

“She'll let you fuck her,” said Sebastian, “but when you're gagging for cock you come to me.”

I choked on him and jerked back, strings of drool caught between my mouth and his hard-on. “Jesus, Sebastian, I--”

He tore at my hair, pushing my face back down and away from his, which was twisted and flushed with arousal and embarrassment. “Oh, shut up and finish what you started.”

Rather more reluctant now, confused but in no state to pursue the matter, I went back to work. Sebastian had gone slightly soft but I could feel him rising again with each pass of my lips and tongue. He was close--that shivering, taut moment just before release--and I was ready for him, ready to spit into the sink then kiss his open mouth, when the bathroom door swung inward and Julia said “Oh _Jesus Christ_ , of _course_.”

“Shit,” I said, and pulled away again. Sebastian made a wrathful sound and tried to grasp his own cock but I swatted his hand away and said, “For God’s sake, don’t.” 

I couldn’t look at him and so I looked at his sister, though they were so similar in their fury and their shame that her white-lipped rage made me think of him behind me. I heard the teeth of his zipper cleave together. A streak of spit cooled on my chin.

“We’re going home,” she said. “Come on.”

“But the people--” I began. 

She shook her head decisively. “Absolutely not. I couldn’t bear to be seen by them. Do you know what that witch said to me after you’d gone, Charles? Do you? They all know what you were doing in here. I won’t go back to the bar. I’m leaving right now, and both of you are coming with me.”

“Why the hell should _I_?” said Sebastian. “I’m not ashamed.”

“You may not care what people think about you,” she said, “But I hope you’ll give a scrap of consideration to what they think about _me_. You aren’t the _sun_ , Sebastian. We don’t all spin around you. Not even Charles.”

“Come on Sebastian,” I said, long-suffering. I’d sobered enough to start to hate myself, and now I was at the end of my rope.

“Like hell,” he said.

Julia opened her mouth, indignant, but before she could speak I rounded on her brother and grabbed him by his shirtfront. “Let’s _go_ ,” I snarled, and pulled him from the sink. His shoes squeaked on the tile, and he let out a little huff of surprise. “Now,” I said, and pushed him toward the door. 

Julia’s jaw was still open when we passed her, more with surprise now than intent. I heard her skirts snap as she turned to follow.

#

77th seemed tilted at a strange angle when I got out to the street. I clutched a signpost and closed my eyes, willing down my gorge. Sebastian lit a cigarette and glowered at the curb. A cab came by and he made to raise his arm, but Julia--astonishing me--smacked it down with the side of her clutch.

“Oh no,” she said. “You’re not running off just yet.”

“Why not?” He rubbed his bicep, cigarette crammed in the corner of his mouth so the words came out of the other. “I haven’t ruined enough of your night? Or _you_ haven’t ruined enough of _mine_?”

“Just let him go, Jules.”

“Fuck you,” he said, pushing away from the signpost he’d been hanging on. I lurched back from the tip of his cigarette, staggering. But suddenly he was laughing, close to tears. “Oh no, sorry, not tonight. It’s a _Monday_.”

“Excuse me?” Julia’s chin had gone up, and she would have been formidable except that she swayed slightly and couldn’t quite focus.

“It’s your night,” I said. “That’s what he means. I was always going to come home with you.” How ghastly that sounded. How mathematic and utilitarian. A horrible, childish notion of _fair_ that left everyone unsatisfied.

“Jesus Christ,” said Julia, the blasphemy ripped out of her by exasperation. She stepped into the street and threw up an arm in time to catch a passing yellow cab. Hip cocked, head tilted, her silhouette could have been Sebastian’s from moments ago. “Get in, both of you.”

“What?” I said.

“I’m _sick_ of this,” she said. “Charles…” And there, standing in the lee of the cab’s open door, she finally spat out what she’d swallowed in the backseat of the Uber. “If you want both of us why don’t you just...just have both of us.”

Sebastian rounded on her, scattering sparks from his cigarette. “What the hell is _that _supposed to mean?”__

____

__

“I do,” I said, ignoring him, opening my hands helplessly. “Or anyway, I try to. I just--”

“No,” she said. “No you don’t. I get _half_ of you. Do you know how much it hurts to get half of what you want, every time? You get used to it and just slowly starve.”

“You make him sound like an eating disorder.” Sebastian pitched his cigarette into the gutter. “I’m going back to Brooklyn.”

I watched Julia gather herself: eyes closed, the points of her manicured nails pressed to the window of the cab. “Please,” she said, and it cost her. “Just come to mine and talk. If you go back to Brooklyn you'll be surly and punish us both for weeks. Charles will be resentful, and all of us will have a thoroughly miserable night. Besides, the L isn't running tonight and you'll have to take a cab or go through Queens.”

That made him pause; he goggled at her.

“What?” she said. “I take the trains.”

“Ma’am,” said the cab driver. “You want a ride, or no?”

“Come on Sebastian,” I said. “It’s a five minute ride. Your place is ages away.” I almost said, _you can sleep on the sofa_ , but I caught myself because it would have sent him straight back to Williamsburg.

Where he would sleep, I didn’t know. What exactly Julia wanted from this, I was equally unsure. But I could feel things crumbling around me, and knew this was the only opportunity I might have to hold them together.

“You’re going to lecture me,” he said.

“For fuck’s sake.” I fell into vulgarity because it was where we were most comfortable with one another. Then, in full view of Julia and the cabbie, I grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him. Messily. Most people hate the taste of a smoker but on him I savored it like a delicacy, or a treat that I rarely allowed myself.

“Now,” I said, his bitterness still on my tongue. “Get in the goddamned car.”

#

We could have walked--it wasn’t far to Julia’s--but we would not have held together. Getting into the cab forced a moment of decision, and did not admit of a change of heart. 

There was a ticklish moment on the steps of Julia’s building, where Sebastian shied and I wondered what the hell was about to happen. But the doorman got us through it, professional courtesy spiced with a pinch of _get the hell inside already_. And then we were in the elevator. Julia dug for her keys in a clutch so small they should have been obvious at once. From the faint warmth visible beneath her foundation, she was deeply embarrassed and using the hunt to hide her eyes. I wished I had some task to offer me the same escape, and settled for watching the numbers tick by as we climbed.

She opened the door for us and said, too chipper, “drinks?” which gave her an opportunity to disappear into the kitchen for ice. Sebastian deposited himself on the tufted chesterfield by the fireplace, kicking his feet up on the fawn-colored leather. His expression dared me to comment, but I didn’t.

I was suddenly, deeply tired, and fell into the wingback chair across from him. Between us, the coffee table stood like a bulwark, or a battlefield, until Julia reappeared with an ice bucket and three glasses. She took a bottle of gin from the bar and dropped it between the accessories with less ceremony than I expected from her, but when she fell onto the sofa she went like a cherry blossom lilting from its tree branch.

Suddenly, seeing the siblings beside each other on the sofa, I felt less like Julia and I were cajoling Sebastian into good behavior, and more like I’d wandered into dangerous territory myself.

Julia’s carefully constructed appearance had come slightly undone--fine hair curling at her temples, makeup smudged around the eyes. She looked louche and sleepy, a little cheap. Sebastian’s lips were still swollen, and his feet almost touched Julia’s thigh. Her hand strayed close to his ankle, where his rumpled trousers revealed a length of black silk sock.  
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry, and reached for the gin to save me.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Sebastian reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a neatly rolled joint. “An intervention?”

I expected Julia to protest, but she only took the ashtray from the end table with an air of weary forbearance. 

“I don’t…” I said. “I mean. I didn’t think we needed to...I thought it was working.” Then, miserably, into my gin: “Until tonight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Julia dropped ice into a glass. Drunkenness made her exceedingly precise. “It was never working. It was only...well, it just sort of happened. We don’t tend to talk about these kinds of things, in our family.”

“Incest?” said Sebastian, exhaling a mephitic cloud.

“It isn’t--” I began. 

But he waved a languid hand. “Semantics. Bit of it, Jules?”

She pursed her lips at the joint he offered, then pinched it from between his fingers with an air of slight distaste. I thought she might pitch it, but to my surprise she took a professional hit and handed it back.

I felt at sea. I had expected tears, recriminations. Perhaps an end to this unlikely relationship, which might have been a relief. Instead, Julia and Sebastian watched me through a haze of smoke and made me wonder if it was I who had only ever had half of each of them, rather than the other way around. 

And then I thought of Julia’s perfume, her Salome, and how she had tried to have this conversation earlier tonight.

“Were you planning,” I began, and then had to stop and drink more gin. “Sorry, but, were you hoping to, uh...to _both_ um…”

“Are you asking if we both want to fuck you?” said Sebastian. “Because I’m sure the answer’s yes but I hardly think Jules would have planned for us to do it concurrently.” He was sagging into the arm of the sofa now, eyes half-shut.

Julia put her face into the cage of one hand and sighed, deeply. “No, Charles. I wasn’t planning on a...a... _ménage à trois_.”

“ _Just_ call it a threesome, Julia. Christ, it’s like you were born at the turn of the century.” He took another hit, examined what was left of the joint, and offered it to me.

I held the smoke in my lungs perhaps longer than advisable. When I let it out my chest ached and my throat was raw. Voice deep, head swimming I said, “You weren’t _planning_ on it.”

Julia looked up sharply; Sebastian took his time. But both pairs of eyes ended on me: a matched set, blue and bloodshot.

“Would you,” I asked. “Ever?” And then, “Now?”

I thought Julia would dismiss the idea out of hand; instead she said nothing and swallowed as if her mouth were dry. Her gaze fluttered briefly to Sebastian, then returned to me, a nervous bird moving between branches.

“Charles,” said Sebastian, suddenly looking very serious. He cast a soft glance at his sister, and his tenderness surprised me.

“Never mind,” I said, feeling lightheaded and a fool. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I even--

“We used to practice kissing,” she said, swiftly. As though she had to get the words out before she thought better of it. Throughout, she stared intently at sharp bones of her knee beneath pink silk, fingers pressed into the divots there. “Maybe older than we ought to have kept it up.”

A delicate flush crept across Sebastian’s nose. “Jules…”

She let out a breath, almost laughing, and looked up at him. “Well we did.” 

My base faculties integrated this information more quickly than my intellectual ones, leaving me baffled and instantly, achingly hard. Julia’s gentle laughter fell on _me_ now: soft rain, delicate snowflakes. Apparently my arousal was more obvious than I might like.

“Don’t tell me you jack off to that,” said Sebastian, sounding mortified. Faced with his sister’s sudden change of tack, he had become the prudish one. “ _Charles_.”

“Maybe once or twice.” A week. Who wouldn’t? They were gorgeous, and I knew each of them intimately. I could imagine this particular taboo with far more clarity than any other pervert on the street.

“Really?” asked Julia, leaning back into the curve of the Chesterfield. Something flinty showed in her expression: determination, perhaps revenge. “How does _that_ fantasy usually start?”

How indeed? _In media res_ , if I were honest. Conjured from shreds of desire as I came closer and closer to climax. But Julia was watching me, daring me, and I could not answer her challenge with that banal truth.

“Well.” I cleared my throat and reached for my gin, fumbling and wondering if I was drunk or high or just embarrassed. “Say we’re at the cabin, in the Catskills. It’s late--about this late, maybe. We’re in the living room, in front of the fire. Just the three of us. A little drunk. Usually I’m...I go out of the room, maybe to get ice, or another bottle. I come back, and…”

“And?” Her voice had an edge in it. I had asked for this, and she was ready to call my bluff. Looking to Sebastian, I got no help from that quarter. He only stared back, inscrutable.

“And _what_ , Charles? What are we doing?” The muscles of her jaw tightened as I failed to answer. “Is he kissing me? Fucking me? Am I fucking him?”

That series of images struck me like machine gun fire. I shook my head, because what we needed right now was not a fantasy, but a segue. “No. No, you…” I looked between them, at the angles of their bodies on the sofa. Sebastian’s restless hands, the slight gapping of Julia’s dress at the décolletage. 

“Sebastian is...is cupping your breast,” I said, looking at him and wondering if he would do it.

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. Took a long, considering hit off the last of his joint. Setting the butt in his empty glass, he picked a piece of ash from his tongue before--brusque and businesslike--he reached across Julia to scoop his palm beneath the swell of her left breast. “Like this?”

She started, but did not pull away. Neither of them looked at each other: only at me.

“Inside her dress,” I said.

After a moment’s pause, and with more delicacy, he slipped his fingers beneath the rolled hem of the satin. I saw her catch her breath.

“Sorry,” he said. “They’re a little cold.”

Her laughter was not gentle now, but glassine, brittle. “And then?” 

Through the fine silk of her gown I saw her right nipple had gone hard. Her left was obscured by the shape of Sebastian’s knuckles. I wanted to put my hand over that shape, feel how his fingers curved around her breast.

“You’re kissing,” I said.

They both watched me a moment longer, hesitating.

“Open mouths,” I added, remembering Julia’s fresh lipstick earlier in the evening.

They leaned in, eyelashes fluttering down, like children playing at kissing a reflection in the mirror. But of them were very real, their lips wet and parting. I saw Sebastian’s thumb move beneath the satin, and from the small sound Julia made I guessed he had brushed it over the stiffening tip of her breast. Hadn’t I done the same, and heard her make that same noise?

When they pulled away, they stared at each other for the span of a breath before Sebastian said, “Then what? Do you just...watch us fuck?” There was a faint quaver in it, a trace of fear. He did not want that.

Neither did I. Not now. “No,” I said. “You notice I’ve come back, and there’s...a bit of an awkward moment.”

Julia convulsed with laughter: almost hysterical, almost a sob. It got me out of my chair and around the coffee table, but before I had even reached them Sebastian had released her breast and taken both of her hands in his.

“Julia,” he said, “we don’t have to--”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “God, Jules, I didn’t mean--”

She pulled her hands from Sebastian’s grip and stood, wobbling slightly in her heels, weight poised to shift. I thought, for a moment, she was going to run or fall or faint. But she looked at him, then looked at me, then bent to grab two fistfulls of her precious dress and lift it over her head.

It went easily, a whisper against her skin. She was wearing nothing underneath, save her jewelry still, and pink velvet tee-straps that made her calves curve like a pin-up’s. The scent of her perfume followed the silk through the air like a shadow.

“Jesus,” I said, and reached for her unthinking.

She sank back onto the tufted leather of the sofa and let her knees fall apart. I had never seen her quite so wanton so soon in the game. She was terrified: color high in her cheeks and eyebrows arched with arrogance that only served to accentuate her fear. But she had not called it off, and so I went on my knees in front of her and kissed the insides of her thighs, hands following the muscles of her legs to her ankles and then to the phallic curve of her shoes.

Fabric hissed and crumpled behind me: Sebastian’s jacket, falling to the floor. I heard the coffee table creak and felt his hands on my shoulders, fingers sliding up into my hair. His knees bracketed my shoulders, pressing in. He had sat behind me, and would have the same view of his sister that I did. His fingertips traced my collar, then peeled my shirt away from my shoulders.

I wrapped an arm around his leg, kept the other around hers, unsure what to do, where to go, surrounded by heat and the smell of Julia’s cunt and Sebastian’s cologne. 

Sebastian’s fingers tightened in my hair, made my scalp sting as he twisted my face to meet his and gave me a long, filthy kiss. When he finished, he tore me away and pushed my head toward Julia. 

“Go on,” he said, a little gruff. When I hesitated, he made a fist in my hair and shoved, pressing my face between Julia’s open thighs. On all fours now, open mouth forced against the wetness of her cunt, I moaned.

Sebastian’s grip on my head slackened and I felt his hands at my belly, unfastening my trousers. Julia made a small, mewling sound, and the muscles that ran from her groin to her knees trembled.

Roughly, Sebastian pulled my trousers down. His hand closed on my cock--too tight, too much, Jesus _fuck_ \--and I tried to cry out but I only opened my mouth wider against Julia, could only lick into her harder, clutch at her hip bone with one scrabbling hand. 

Sebastian’s tongue traced my spine, and then I felt him come down off the table, kneel behind me. Felt his erection against the cleft of my ass.

“Lube?” he asked, stroking my cock. I wondered how he expected me to answer. I could feel Julia’s skin prickling with sweat, slick against my jaw and ears.

I tensed--this was not usually how he liked things. Bottom, yes, though a bossy one. Not to say we hadn’t done this. Not to say I hadn’t liked it.

“Fucking hell,” he said, when I didn’t answer. He got back up. I heard him clattering in Julia’s bedroom, the slide of a bedside table drawer, and then another.

“Julia?” I lifted my head and kissed the crease of skin at the top of her thigh.

“Shh, Charles.” She put her hand on my brow, her fingers cool, and would not look down. “Not now. Your hand, please.”

No sooner had I obliged this request than Sebastian was back. He crashed to the carpet behind me and had two slippery fingers in my ass before I could breathe or swallow. Muscles clenched from my skull to the base of my spine.

“Relax,” he said, his free hand against my side, palm running along the lines of my ribs. “Charles. Charles.” The hand in my hair again, and the pain made me whimper. He inhaled, paused, and then the words came out in a rush. “Could you fuck her with me inside you?”

My cock was already so hard it _hurt_ and at this, it jumped, spattering my belly with precum. “Fuck,” I said. “Jesus, I don’t know.”

“Do you _want_ to?” he asked, pressing a third finger inside of me. 

“ _God_ yes.”

“Jules?” said Sebastian, twisting his hand so my knees buckled.

She opened her eyes, finally--she so rarely opened her eyes during sex--and her pupils were black holes swallowing the blue light of her eyes. Reflexive, wanting, I curled my fingers up against the soft inside of her. She gasped and nodded once, brows puckering.

Sebastian pulled his hand out of me and I heard the brittle sound of tearing foil, the crackle of latex, the click of the wet plastic pump cap on the lube. “How do you want to do this?” he asked.

Usually, with Sebastian, logistics involved cursing, shoving, occasionally pausing porn to map out body parts and leverage. It could be straightforward, but it was never so...clinical. I sat back on my heels, cock flagging slightly.

Then Julia, who only ever talked around what she wanted, stretched herself out on the sofa, hitched one leg onto its back, and said, “like this.”

It was a long sofa, an antique, slightly too large for the apartment. But just large enough for this purpose. I went to one knee on the sticky, creaking leather, my hip pressed to the soft inside of her thigh. Then, turning, I put a hand out to Sebastian. “Did you bring one for me?”

“Shit,” he said, casting a wild glance back at Julia’s bedroom. “No, wait, hang on.” He had taken off his trousers, his shirt hanging open over a sheer white tee. Now, he knelt to tear at his abandoned jacket, finally freeing his wallet from an inner pocket. When he slapped the condom into my hand, his fingers were still slick with lube. My own slipped on the package, trembling. I bit back a hysterical laugh, remembering: _cosmopolitan New York Catholics_.

Sebastian put a hand on my shoulder, pressing where it was tense, pushing me down toward the sofa. “You wanted this,” he said. Not accusing; it sounded almost like a question, like an offer.

My cock twitched in my hand as I rolled on the condom. Julia had her face turned away, her fingers between her legs. I wasn’t used to her like this. I was used to shy smiles, a blush, staring into her eyes. I liked her, like that. But something in me liked her this way, too: ashamed and filthy. Really sinning, not just playing at it.

I pushed past her slippery hand, felt the bones of her fingers against my cock, and then I was inside of her and bent over her, close enough to feel her breath on my chest. Lowering my head I kissed the corner of her lips until she finally faced me, curled her tongue into my mouth against the sensitive stretch of skin beneath my upper lip. Instinctively, I moved in her: slowly, savoring, remembering how she felt. When I closed my eyes I could almost forget--

But then I felt Sebastian’s palm on the curve of my ass, his thumb slipping between my cheeks to brush my perineum. Pleasure whited out my thoughts. I hissed, muscles clenching, driving too hard down so Julia cried out into my mouth.

“Careful,” I said, and she opened her eyes as if I was speaking to her. Her gaze met mine, flicked over my shoulder, returned to me. Leather creaked and shifted beneath me as Sebastian settled his weight there. 

On the opposite wall, above the armchair, Julia had hung a watercolor landscape. In the glass, made opaque by the angle of the light, I could see the vague shadows of our bodies: the curve of Julia’s calf and ankle, the concave bridge of my own back. Sebastian’s chest and bent head, his arm stretched to my shoulder, the movement of his hips as he--

Whenever I bottomed for him, my body fought. At first, Julia watched me with concern, a wrinkle between her brows. Then, as my breath hitched, as I remembered to relax around the heat and insistence of his cock, her concern became hunger, and surprise. She touched my face with fingers that smelled like salt, like sex. If any of my will had been left to me I would have turned my face to suck at them, to taste her on herself. As it was, my mouth only fell open, slack with sensation. Julia, dazed, did what I could not. The pads of her fingers and the sharp edges of her manicured nails touched my lips and tongue. Amazement left her expression unfocused.

“Charles,” she said, “Are you always--”

Sebastian thrust into me--not hard, but definite--and my startled cry cut her off.

“ _Wait_ , Sebastian. _Fuck_.” It was too much.

“Do you want me to wait or do you want me to fuck?” He pinched my ass, rubbed his thumb over the base of my tailbone where the thin skin was stretched thinner by his cock. “Which is it?”

“No,” I said. “No, I...but if you keep...I can’t come yet. I have to… _unf_. For Julia.”

He went still as he understood, one hand steady in the center of my back.

“Just let me,” I said, absurdly: trapped between them, utterly without control. When I moved to pull out of Julia I pushed myself deeper onto Sebastian, and thrusting into her I felt the slide of his cock in my ass. I was never going to last like this. “Wait. You can’t just...You have to…” Instead of trying to explain, I reached back and grabbed for his hip, to move him with me.

At that first thrust, Julia went limp: our combined weight pushed her against the decorative embroidered cushion against the sofa’s arm, dislodged the net of crystals from her hair, forced a low sound from her throat. She pushed a hand between us and her knuckles kneaded low on my belly as she touched her clit. A flush began to crawl up her neck, across her breasts. The muscles deep inside of her, slick and wet, spasmed around me.

“Yes,” I said, surprised at how quickly she was coming. “God, Julia.” Still holding tight to Sebastian’s hip, digging into his flesh, I pushed into her again, speaking a steady stream of blasphemy as she mewled and writhed, her face twisting. Anyone else might have thought she was in pain, but I had seen her in pain--a broken wrist, a twisted ankle, her husband’s cruelty, her father’s death--and it only turned her brittle. It was ecstasy that made her scream. 

I treasured each of Julia’s orgasms. She was tricky to bring off--too tightly wound. It took patience and devotion and I had often woken the next morning with my forearm aching and my fingers cramped. But it was worth the effort; when she came she was spectacular, losing every shred of her reserve, shattering the porcelain mask she wore to charm big donors and Catholic charity ladies. She became a human--the _most_ human--sweating, makeup streaked, strangling on her own cries.

When her back arched with the elegance of a cathedral I felt Sebastian’s breath against my neck, surprised. Suddenly his sister was no prude, no people-pleaser. Eyes shut tight, sweat dripping from her collarbone to slide between her breasts, she existed only to be pleased.

“Oh God,” he said. “Julia. She’s--” And then an inarticulate sound, the sting of his teeth in the meat of my shoulder. “Charles, _please_.”

I let go of him, finally letting him move how he wanted, and felt the length of him slide nearly out of me, then push back in, hip bones flush with the sore muscles of my ass. There was a moment where I felt our rhythm falter, worried we might lose it, worried he might pull back too far as I pressed in too deep, but his fingers curled into the soft divot below my ribs, found the channel of my iliac crest, and he anchored himself to each of my thrusts into his sister so that as I came out of her he was already pushing deeper into me, chanting a rosary of curses.

Wonderfully, Julia kept coming. Once she started, she could go and go, lost in a straining revery. She made sounds I loved, sounds I knew embarrassed her in the morning. I fucked into her now without finesse, knowing she didn’t need it: every inch of her ate sensation.

“Charles.” Sebastian’s grip ached, his nails biting into my skin, but his voice had grown detached--drugged, floating. “Charles. I’m going to--”

“No. Wait...wait...don’t. Not yet.” I was pleading, whining, but I could feel the ripple of him coming, the thickness and the shiver of it. “Please,” I said, “I--ah!”

My orgasm caught like a spark in dry brush, exploding from the base of my spine and climbing through my nerves until the corners of my vision faded to white. Julia bared her teeth, a sound dying in her throat, as I stiffened inside her and pulsed, pulsed, pulsed...God, it felt like it wasn’t going to _end_. But it finally did and I collapsed forward, catching myself before my weight, and Sebastian’s, fell onto her.

Bracing himself between my shoulderblades--my arms buckled but held, barely--Sebastian pulled out of me and stood, wobbling. I watched him walk to the bathroom, tripping once on the edge of the carpet. Gently, I eased out of Julia. The room swam in golden light, still caught in the last traces of cigarette and marijuana smoke.

“Christ in heaven,” I said.

“I’ll just…” Julia stood from the sofa, unsteady, took a step, and then sat heavily again to remove her heels. Barefoot, she padded to the bathroom, where she and Sebastian shimmied round one another in the doorway, skin sliding on slick skin.

I yawned, so widely that my jaw cracked, and felt the effects of weed and liquor creep back into my consciousness. Sex had held the dizziness and nausea at bay but now I only wanted to lie down forever and maybe die.

I closed my eyes. I only meant to rest there for a moment, and then to clean up. Perhaps to call a cab. I didn’t know what we had done, and wasn’t sure I wanted to face the morning in anyone’s company, let alone the Flytes’.

#

How I got to bed, I have no idea. Regardless, that is where I woke, Julia beside me. She still wore traces of last night’s makeup--unthinkable, as she was fastidious about her skincare regimen--and no pajamas. She could only sleep naked when she was very, very drunk. Otherwise, she had told me, her breasts got cold and kept her awake.

Blearily, I cupped one of them with my hand and felt the cool skin give under my palm. She made a small noise of protest and turned over, taking the blankets with her. Belatedly, I remembered Sebastian slipping his hand inside her dress. My lackadaisical morning erection became decidedly less so, and my hungover head spun.

“Shit,” I said, covering my eyes with a pillow. Where had he gone? Home, surely. If I was here in bed with Julia, then Sebastian must be elsewhere. Had we talked at all last night? What had transpired after...that?

Maybe this could still be salvaged. I remembered my fantasy from early on the night before--of taking Julia to coffee and breakfast, of morning sex before I left for class. Last night had only been a drunken indiscretion. An aberration. A--

“For God’s sake, Jules, don’t you keep any coffee in your house?”

My fist clenched on the pillow over my face, and I was glad it was there to hide my expression. Slowly, I lowered it to my chest and opened my eyes against the glare of sunshine through the open bedroom door.

Sebastian leaned, contrapposto, on the frame, his nakedness limned in morning light. Beside me, Julia stirred and squinted and cursed softly, before emerging from the shelter of the duvet. “Sebastian? I thought you’d gone.”

In different light he might have hidden the flinch, but I saw it pass over his skin beneath the fine gold hair at the edge of his silhouette. 

“If I remember,” he said, picking out the consonants like splinters, “The L train isn’t running nights, this week.”

No, there would be no salvaging this and soldiering silently on.

“Oh,” said Julia. An awkward silence settled. 

“Listen.” I pushed myself up against the headboard, the bedroom whirling around me. “About last night. I--”

Julia put a firm hand on my thigh beneath the blankets. “Charles I don’t think...well, it’s only that I’d rather--”

“Jesus Christ.” Sebastian sloughed off the door frame, loose-limbed. His weight came down hard on the white wrought iron of the bedstead, making the frame squeal. “Julia, you’re the one who said you were sick of mincing around all this. So, let’s not mince. Is this how it is now? We’re a thing? We’re going to make it work like this, do more of that?”

“Who’s mincing here?” I asked. “Use some more specific nouns.”

“Throuples are having a cultural moment right now.” He stretched, popping something in his spine. “We’d be hip.”

“Throuples,” said Julia, and rolled her eyes. “And how many of them are...I mean, we’re not exactly...it’s more complicated.”

Sebastian put one foot on the rail and hopped over it, into bed, squashing my foot. “Finish a fucking sentence for once.”

“What do you expect?” she asked, sitting up. She kept a modest fold of Frette cotton against her breasts. “That Charles will just show up at the faculty holiday party with two plus ones? That he’ll bring both Flytes to his next gallery opening? Pose with us both for the front page of Arts and Leisure?”

“I hardly think I’d make the front page,” I said.

Sebastian smirked. “Incest might put you there.”

Julia bridled. “It isn’t--”

“It is,” I said. “At least, now.”

“Finally,” said Sebastian. “Something really juicy for the confessional. Interesting departure from Jules’ usual sins, I’m sure.”

“ _Sebastian_.” Two spots of color burnt high on her cheeks. She opened her mouth to say something else, but her phone on the nightstand chimed and--to avoid conversation, I’m sure--she snatched it up and tucked her chin, eyes toward the screen.

“The coffee’s in the cupboard over the sink,” I said. “It’s Bustelo.” 

“Uck,” he said, and made a face. Still, he hopped out of bed, balls swinging in my face. Before I remembered where I was, who was with me, I slapped his naked ass. He yelped, then frowned over my head at Julia. But she had ignored the entire thing. Something on her phone had caught her attention.

“Look,” she said, and tilted the screen toward us both.

It showed a post on Instagram: a group of beautifully dressed people on a plush red carpet, backed by white columns and bright gold lights. For a moment, I couldn’t place the strangers on the screen. Then I realized: it was us.

The left half of the photo was comprised of our erstwhile companions: the critic, the Englishman, the dour fellow whose profession had flown in one of my ears and out the other. But the right half of the group? I felt like I was staring at a remnant of a dream--the night had that quality to it, leant no doubt by booze, weed, and transgression.

Julia’s train twisted around her legs. One of my hands rested on her hip, the other half raised and holding a plastic champagne flute. At my other shoulder, Sebastian hung by one sharp elbow, hair a mess and tie askew. The image made me smell Julia’s Salome, made me remember the feel of that messy hair through my fingers. Recalled the tension that had sung between us all night and its ultimate result.

“What’s the caption say?” asked Sebastian, too far away to make out the words. 

“This bunch of bright young things sparkled at the gala,’” I read. “It’s Last Night at the Met.”

“What did I say?” Julia touched the screen, perhaps a little fondly. “I knew we’d get on.”

“Well, it isn’t the front page of Arts and Leisure,” said Sebastian. “But it’s certainly a start.”


End file.
